The Portland Trail Blazers have just gripped the short-handed Los Angeles Clippers in a headlock, defeating them 108-98 in Game 5 of their seven-game series, and going up 3-2. Not only is this the first series lead Portland’s had, but it was their third straight win after dropping the first two Los Angeles tilts in blowout fashion.
This game was closer than the fourth quarter would have you believe, with the usual Blazer poor shooting off the trap, the Clippers using hyperactivity to disrupt the Blazers on both ends, and Los Angeles playing with the kind of heart and guts that were sorely lacking last year against the Houston Rockets (who themselves looked utterly without life in their Game 5 with the Golden State Warriors).
In the end, Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum were finally able to establish themselves fully in this series, dominating the final frame and providing the impetus needed for the Blazers to finally pull away from Los Angeles. With respect to DeAndre Jordan, the starting backcourt for Portland are the two best players remaining in this series now, and them combining for 49 points (despite poor shooting from Lillard, 7-20 from the field) was the kind of performance that the Clippers simply don’t have the talent to overcome without Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.
Here’s five other things to point out from the Trail Blazers’ crucial Game 5 road win:
- Jamal Crawford Is Not a Top Option, Says Captain Obvious: Crawford started at small forward tonight, an attempt by Clippers coach Doc Rivers to goose his team’s offense. It was also a show of faith that the Clippers’ trapping defense, which added a new wrinkle with a defender fronting Plumlee in the first quarter at the same time of the trap, would continue to stall the Portland attack.
Crawford wasn’t a huge minus on defense tonight; he got taken advantage of sometimes by Mo Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu, but Rivers’ game plan all along has been to make those guys beat his team. It’s on the offensive end where Jamal had something of a stinker. He went 6-23 for 17 points, and played more than 44 out of a possible 48 minutes as well.
Crawford is 36 years old, and having to both shoot 23 times and try to hang with Aminu, Harkless, Allen Crabbe, and McCollum when they’re flitting around in Terry Stotts’ offensive sets took its toll, especially with that extremely large minutes total. He’s going to try to have a better game on Friday, but like Charles Barkley said last night, “He (Crawford) shoots nothing but tough shots, like J.R. Smith. You can’t win shooting tough shots all the time.”
- Emotion Can Carry You Only So Far: After Game 4, my friend (and fellow Oregon Sports News contributor) Bryant Knox and I had a back-and-forth on Twitter over how the Clippers would respond after losing Paul and Griffin. Bryant thought that the Clips would come out with a great deal of emotion, and that it would carry them to a Game 5 win before petering out over the final two games. I thought Los Angeles would come out with fire in their belly, but that they would end up losing Game 5.
I was proved right, as the Blazers weathered their first-quarter cold streak and a temporary Clipper rally to win. The Clippers came out totally flat after halftime, failing to score a single point until about 6:00 left, and not getting a field goal until the five-minute mark. They did tie it in the latter stages of the third, but it was a last-gasp type of effort.
Listening to Rivers’ post-game press conference, he mentioned several times that his team was emotionally exhausted. He said he burned early timeouts not to re-strategize (like he did earlier in the series whenever the Clippers blew a defensive coverage), but to simply get his team a breather. I mentioned that Crawford played all but 3:38 of this game, but Austin Rivers and Jeff Green also played many more minutes then they were accustomed to.
Unfortunately for Doc Rivers, Austin Rivers, Green, and Crawford were the only healthy sources of reliable offense he had available; JJ Redick did have 19 points, but he still has a bum heel and shot 7-17. They came out pumped-up, surrounded by their home fans, with their leader in street clothes and a sling cheering them on…and they still lost.
That kind of thing is just so deflating. I would feel sorry for them, if the Blazers hadn’t experienced the same thing last year with a hindered LaMarcus Aldridge and Wesley Matthews.
I’m not sure the Clippers can summon up that kind of effort in Portland in Game 6, where they couldn’t get a win when everyone was available to them. Barring a minor miracle or an extreme Portland cold shooting streak, Los Angeles looks to be dead in the water.
- Your Nightly #PlumGod Update: Mason Plumlee had another double-double last night, a more traditional one with 10 points and 15 rebounds (four offensive). The assists total wasn’t eye-popping (just four), but that was the Clippers finally taking away the #PlumGod’s passing lanes and fronting him when they double-teamed Lillard.
I was thrilled to see the #PlumGod show off some offensive moves, with a floater and a couple transition dunks. He even went 2-2 from the free-throw line, which brings me to…
- MAKE YOUR $&%($#& FREE THROWS! RAAAAAAAGE!: Seeing almost everybody on the Blazers blow golden chances to extend their lead or cut into LA’s lead at the free-throw line in the first half prompted a rare outburst from me while watching the game. It’s a good thing my brother and I don’t live with children or squares.
It wasn’t like they had Ed Davis shooting 12 freebies in the first half, either (though he did miss his only two of the game). Most of the team missed at least one, even Lillard, a top-10 free-throw shooter percentage-wise.
At one time, the Blazers were 6-14 from the foul line, unforgivable for a team that isn’t employing DeAndre Jordan. They’re very lucky the Clippers couldn’t take advantage; if Paul were playing, Los Angeles would have jumped ahead by double digits.
If the Blazers get a tougher challenge from the Clips in Game 6, or if they do move on to play Golden State, they have to clean that up. That’s too many misses, from too many good free-throw shooters, for it to be a fluke.
- The Key To Life is Balance, Grasshopper: Of the eight Blazers to play significant minutes in Game 5, six of them scored in double figures. A seventh, Al-Farouq Aminu, had seven points even though he shot 1-6.
That’s the kind of balance that the Blazers haven’t really had this year; when you have two guards that can slice and dice defenses like Lillard and McCollum, you can just rely on them in the regular season and play off them. What the Blazers found out after Game 1 is that a two-man team will lose to a five-man team 10 times out of 10.
So, seeing guys like Crabbe (11 points), Henderson (10 points), Harkless (a huge 19 points), and Plumlee (double figures for the first time since Game 2) help McCollum (27 points) keep the Blazers afloat until Lillard finally went off in the fourth quarter (22 points, 16 in the fourth) was encouraging. The “Others,” as Shaquille O’Neal condescendingly refers to role players, of Portland are finding out that they can make plays in the playoffs, and that they’ll be relied on to make them.
The Warriors will be watching tape on this series first thing tomorrow, and while they’ll give due diligence to the fact that this series isn’t over, both among themselves and to the media, you’d assume they’ll pay special attention to how the Clippers defended Portland. The Warriors may not have Steph Curry for a couple weeks, but they do have the kind of personnel that will make playing against the Clippers D look like a casual session of skinny-dipping.
If the Blazers do end up moving on, and they don’t want to get punked like the Rockets did (or like the Rockets allowed themselves to, honestly), everyone has to continue playing well, keep playing with confidence, and keep trusting one another.
Game 6 is Friday. It hasn’t been announced when and on what network it’ll be on yet (as of 11:00 PM last night).
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